Can thin-model debate have real-world effect?

updated 11:19 a.m. ET Feb. 7, 2007

NEW YORK - She was a 16-year-old honors student, keenly interested in politics and eager to work for her candidate in last fall’s congressional elections. But when election day came around, the girl wasn’t on the campaign trail. She was in the hospital, with anorexia.

“By then, she wasn’t thinking about the political issues,” says her psychologist, Ann Kearney-Cooke. “She was thinking about how many calories were on her lunch plate.”

The girl is now recovering, but her story is only one of many. Which is why Kearney-Cooke, who’s been treating girls and women with eating disorders for 25 years, sees the current “skinny-model” debate sweeping the fashion industry as a positive step — one that may eventually help lead to a healthier body image for young girls.

“This is such a waste of young people’s energy,” the Cincinnati-based psychologist says of the ever-intensifying obsession with being thin, an affliction she’s seen in girls as young as 5 or 6. “Teenagers should be figuring out who they are, how they feel about Iraq, about abortion. Instead, the question ’Who am I?’ has been replaced by, ’How do I look?”’

With Fashion Week currently in full swing in New York, the debate over thin models is on the front burner. The Council of Fashion of Designers of America recently issued voluntary guidelines to curb the use of overly thin models. Officials in Madrid set a minimum body-mass index, and Milan tightened restrictions. Efforts gained urgency after 21-year-old Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston died of anorexia in November, at 88 pounds.

Slide show   N.Y. Fashion Week Diane von Furstenberg, Donna Karan, BCBG among designers whose creations are being unveiled at Bryant Park.

Surely, models have always been thin — Twiggy was a phenomenon in the ’60s for her waifish looks. But recent years have seen a trend toward the emaciated, with younger models displaying protruding hip bones, sallow skin, and stick-like legs with knees wider than the thighs.

“A lot of models today, you’re just worried for them,” says Suze Yalof Schwartz, executive editor-at-large for Glamour Magazine. “They look so vulnerable.” (She notes, however, that some models are naturally skinny.) In the ’90s, she points out, the sample size used by designers was 5 feet 9 inches or taller and a size 6 to 8; now, it’s the same height, but a size 0 to 2.

And it isn’t just models embracing the trend. Hollywood actresses, now often canvases for hot designers, are getting thinner and thinner too — a development that likely impacts young women far more than the goings-on in the elite fashion world.

“It amazes me,” says Janice Min, editor of the celebrity magazine US Weekly. “The whole world has shrunk!” Among the many stars with no discernible body fat: Ellen Pompeo of the ABC hit “Grey’s Anatomy,” and Keira Knightley of “Pirates of the Caribbean.” The once more substantial Angelina Jolie (remember her buff Lara Croft?) has gone for the more skeletal look. One result of all this: if you have the slightest tummy, the world now thinks the stork is around the corner. As Min puts it, “If they can’t see a clavicle, they think you’re pregnant!”

And if they really are expecting, there’s a whole other pressure: “To be super-thin until just before your baby comes, and two minutes after,” says Rita Freedman, a psychologist in Harrison, N.Y. who treats women with body-image disorders.

Freedman is skeptical that efforts to get healthier-looking models on the runway will have any impact on ordinary people. “My experience is that things aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse,” she says. “It’s distressing,” she says, “but as a professional, do I think this will have a long-term ripple effect? I doubt it.”

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